Grisly Planting
With the departure of the dead men from the House, the mansion seemed
to me for the nonce most lonely.
I drifted away from the others, into the vacant Hall of the Moth,
slouched down in one of the flimsy chairs. My mind was rather wistful
for the deceased Cosgrove, wanting him back, but not quite sure
whether I preferred him to return alive or dead.
Voices of persons passing in the armoury came to me.
Belvoir’s: “Why, Galton proved that long ago. It stands to reason—”
Lib’s: “Shoot that man!”
A pause in the universe. Then the lightest sound of feet tripping down
the stairs, the flutter of a white skirt in the corridor, and an
apparition crossed the door. At unexpected sight of me, the apparition
became motionless in a pretty sort of confusion, while I staggered to
my modest height.
“Oh, Mr. Bannerlee! I didn’t expect to find you here. That horrid old
man!”
“Why, er—good heavens, Miss Lebetwood, what do you mean?”
“Blenkinson.”
“What, the Master of University College!”
“Why, no—”
“That’s only my ambition for him, you know. When the post is vacant, I
intend to put up his name for it. But what’s the wretch done?”
“He scolded me!”
“The impudent—”
“Or he would have if he dared. That’s the same thing, isn’t it?”
“But what, specifically?”
“Well, you see, I was coming out of Millicent’s room. She was going to
have a game with me this afternoon, but told me she felt too tired
after all.”
“With the last ball disposed of by Bob Cullen?”
“The last I’d let that precious pair have, that was. I had sense to
keep a few for myself. Well, I was awfully sorry Millicent wasn’t up
to it, and I would have gone back to my own room and changed out of
these clothes. But when I came into the passage, Blenkinson was
stepping along as large as life and as still as a—as a cat. When he
saw me he stopped about six feet away and just let down his jaw and
stared.”
“Very bad form.”
“I said, ‘What’s wrong, Blenkinson?’ pretty nippily, I guess, and he
gave a sort of groan and said, ‘They are taking Mr. Cosgrove’s remains
to the mortuary, Miss.’ I didn’t say anything; so he groaned again.”
“Really, you mustn’t concern yourself with the foibles of a foolish
old servant. Anyone with an ounce of sense would know you mean for the
best.”
“_Mean_ for the best!” The sweet grave eyes dimmed a little. “I’m
_doing_ for the best! Each day since this happened I’ve been alone for
hours, thinking, thinking, thinking. I know more about Sean than
anyone else here, and I go over every particle of knowledge I possess,
to discover if it can have any bearing on his death. Oh, I’ve thought
so hard that my head hurts—and emotions like this tear you up even if
you’re too busy thinking to pay attention to how you feel. Don’t you
see, Mr. Bannerlee, I mustn’t be a weeping-willow sort of person; I’ve
got to get some relief once in a while. I’ve got to get the air into
my lungs and the blood into my brain, if I’m to do any good. I’m doing
more for Sean by swinging a racquet than I would if I bedewed his brow
with tears.”
“You’re right, by George! Did you tell this to Blenkinson?”
“To that old woman!”
A silence came. I watched her; her eyes wandered restlessly from
object to object within the room. She turned suddenly toward the
window and looked at the glorious day, and as quickly turned to me
again. “Oh, this is too good to be wasted! I must play. I’ve got to
have someone to beat, Mr. Bannerlee; may I beat you?”
The youth and verve of this girl, her strength of spirit, and the
unspoken appeal in her clear blue eyes, were almost too much for me.
There was a directness about her, like the passage of an arrow to its
mark, unusual in women, I believe, when combined with such softness
and allurement as is hers. I had a very noble impulse to take that
straight and slender body in my arms, and to bestow a needful comfort
of kisses on lips and cheeks and on that cruel golden hair.
As with most such good impulses, this one changed into something
inferior: I bowed politely. “I’ll do my best,” I said. “Give me ten
minutes. I’ll borrow what I need from Crofts, as usual.”
“Will you? Oh, thank you so much!” (To be thanked, so earnestly, by a
_dea certe_!) “I warn you, I’ll beat you. I hope you can give me a
battle.”
Such was my hope, too, when we stepped on the concrete court a quarter
of an hour later.
I should have been routed had I not been able to deliver a smashing
serve which landed in the proper court about one time in three. These
serves were almost always clean aces, and after one of them I was
startled to hear applause from the little knoll which overlooked the
court some distance away. There was Lib.
“Hotto servo, old sportsman!” she called. “Glad there’s somebody
Paula’ll let play with her old tennis balls.”
It was due to happen sooner or later, of course, but it was rather
humiliating immediately afterward to have a wild shot from my racquet
fly many yards over the enclosure.
“Bravo,” called Miss Dale, and laughed and laughed. “Hotto smasho!”
“Sorry,” I called, rushing across; “I’ll get it.”
“Try,” laughed the lonely spectator on the hill. “Serves you right,
Paula. The great big brute of a man!”
“I think it went into the stream,” said Miss Lebetwood. “You’ll have
to run.”
“Oh, I’ll save it right enough; plenty of time to intercept it,” I
answered, turning my rush toward Aidenn Water, which, owing to a
convolution of its course, was some forty yards above the end of the
court and about twice that distance from the side-line.
I kept a careful watch; no ball came down.
“It must be among the strawberry trees after all,” I said, and we
commenced a search through the planted grove which had been so
grateful to the dead Irishman, while Lib favoured us with audible
quips at our discomfiture.
“Just the same, I believe it went into the water,” said Miss Lebetwood
at the outset of our hunt.
“Well, I’m sure it didn’t,” I contradicted. “How could it have? I got
over there in plenty of time—”
“Well then, find it here.”
But the ball was not to be found.
We resumed the match. I served doubles.
“Don’t lose your nerve,” called Lib. “I’ve mortgaged my—say, folks,
there’s a rumpus up at the House. Jiminy, I’ll bet something’s
happened!”
Miss Lebetwood and I looked at each other.
“What is it, Libkins?” she asked sharply. “What do you see?”
“Slews of people—millions of ’em—running around the House. Say,
there’s Doctor Aire going like a pump-handle. Say, I’m going to see
what this is.”
I looked at Miss Lebetwood, and we broke into a run, following Lib.
Although we arrived almost the last of the crowd, Finlay, the
venerable gardener, was still positively drooling with excitement. To
him the credit must go for having inadvertently put a term to more
than one of our galling problems.
Crofts rather fancies carrying on old Watts’ custom of experiment with
unusual trees and shrubs. For the sake of their jewel-like red
berries, he had a couple of Guelder Rose plants, almost full-grown,
ready to be put in the soil, when Cosgrove’s death set all things
awry. To-day they could not be kept out of the ground any longer. One
of the small trees was to be placed at the turn of the drive around
the front of the House, about fifty feet from the library tower.
At the appointed site Finlay had merrily tossed up the soil from a
considerable cavity while Miss Lebetwood and I played our game. There
had come a jab of the spade which appeared to make the earth settle
somewhat. Again the gardener pressed the spade with his heel; the
earth seemed to give way. Alarmed, for he knew that there were no
drains passing beneath this lawn, Finlay got out of the pit he had
digged, reached down and poked experimentally with his tool. Of a
sudden, the bottom of the hole sank something like a yard, and a chunk
of antique subterranean masonry, broken off, was revealed, with
sluggish black water visible through the gap. But something else was
showing there, too, besides the mass of soil which had fallen through
the collapsed roof of the waterway:
A face, with lips, nose, eyelids, cheeks distended into a simple green
sphere—and a hand, its palm covered with thickened, white, and sodden
skin.
Sir Brooke Mortimer was found.
I was far too late, of course, to hear what had been said by those
first around the hole. I learned afterwards. Crofts Pendleton, barring
some natural repugnance to the body in process of dissolution, had
seemed to take a sullen joy in the discovery.
“Here’s your murderer!” he had even cried.
“No, no! Never!” Eve Bartholomew murmured, gave a slight shriek, and
fainted dead away, to be carried by stalwart persons into the Hall.
“I wonder,” said Belvoir.
“Of course not,” declared Miss Lebetwood, and challenged Doctor Aire:
“Isn’t that so?”
“Yes,” he answered; “he’s been dead at least as long as Sean.”
The Guelder Rose plant, which must have a new hole dug for it now, lay
alongside the cavity with its branches bound up and its root encased
in a bag. Beside the rose lay the body of the unfortunate Knight,
drawn from the mysterious water-channel. I should not have recognized
it, had it been the corpse of some friend of mine.
Mastering the disgust that welled in me, I bent over the drawn face,
with its nostrils dilated and eyes forced forward from their sockets.
The dead lips were parted and the blackened tip of the tongue
protruded between the teeth.
I arose, looked down into the eyes of the physician. “Strangled?”
He shook his head slightly. “By water only. The tongue’s a
_post-mortem_ result. Look at his fingers.”
The fingers of the huge hands resting across the chest were covered
with slime, save for two or three, the ends of which appeared
excoriated.
“He was drowned in this subterranean waterway. God knows how he got
in, but you can see that his fingers clutched at the oozy walls and in
some places must have pressed through the slime to the stone itself.
There’s a mark on his forehead, too, not quite so easily accounted
for. No connection with cause of death, however.”
“This _is_ Sir Brooke, of course?” I asked. “It might be anyone, for
all the humanity left in the lineaments.”
“I’m sure it is from the description of the clothing alone,” declared
the Doctor, “but we can satisfy ourselves without delay.”
He plucked the arms from across the chest, then unbuttoned the coat.
Across the waistcoat extended a black band affixed to a pince-nez with
double lenses. Aire held these up with a significant look, then
reached into the inside pocket and withdrew the dead man’s wallet.
This was conclusive, for inside it was stamped the name in gilt:
Crowell Brooke Mortimer. But the flutter of voices that came was not
for this discovery.
From between coat and waistcoat two objects had been dislodged,
objects which rolled out upon the lawn: a couple of water-logged
tennis balls.
I picked one up. The cloth was rotted, and slipped off with a scrape
of the finger. “Well,” I said, “now we know how Sir Brooke lost his
way.”
Same day. 9.55 P.M.
In half an hour Salt was among us once more, and half an hour later he
had come upon the entrance to the underground channel, an arch of
stone masonry veiled by an overhanging branch of alder and almost
wholly submerged in the stream. It lies, as we expected to find, at
the part of Aidenn Water nearest the tennis court, and a fair current
sweeps beneath it. This curious tunnel appears to extend several
hundred feet, and does not end where the Knight’s body was found. The
corpse had been detained by a partial stoppage caused by the collapse
of some of the masonry. But we have not discovered where the channel
rejoins the main stream. If I am at all a judge of facial expressions,
Salt is a disappointed man. Evidently this gruesome factor casts some
elaborate equation of his out of all computation. It struck me at
dinner that Aire, too, looked a bit frustrated.
Talk in the Hall of the Moth after dinner was equally divided between
pity for Sir Brooke (and for Mrs. Bartholomew, who was absent) and
amazement at the lopped and disordered accounts given of our mystery
in the London papers which Salt had brought with him as he had
promised. I rather enjoyed hearing Ludlow pitch into the gentlemen of
the press, for whom it is obvious he has no love—and for those for
whom he has no love he has no mercy.
Maryvale came up, and for once I did not feel uneasy at the sight of
him. He was smiling broadly, I thought a little too broadly after what
had occurred this afternoon. I recalled, however, that Aire was now
taking precautions to insulate Maryvale from contact with any
atrocities which may present themselves—and then flashed through my
mind almost the very words which the man of business was about to say.
“You don’t think so cheaply of my warnings now, Mr. Bannerlee. Now you
must realize what was meant by the spanning and roofing of the
waters.”
“Fully.”
“No, sir!—not fully. There is much for you yet to know. But all this
agitation, this ebullition in the newspapers, this official scrutiny,
will lead to nothing.”
“You refer to what you told me this morning?”
“As I said, this man Cosgrove was removed because he stood in my way
and in the way of my art.”
I thrust in sharply. “Did you remove him yourself?”
“No,” answered Maryvale, “but I have done worse deeds.”
3 o’clock in the morning.
I have heard a curious thing. A few minutes ago I woke with a start
and lay wondering what had roused me. Then the cry of the cat throbbed
from the upper Vale again. The howl rose and fell endlessly, as it
seemed, until, while it mounted to a new pitch of despair, it broke
off. There has not been the faintest murmur since.